The holiday tradition for AESIR continues, you now have the fifth episode, in the increasingly delayed series. At this point, I just plan to write AESIR. It is just too much apart of me and completely plotted out to not be written. I've been considering on a few occasions to actually increase the frequency of the episodes, since it is a 50 episode story and would be years until it sees completion otherwise. Twin Moon is the front runner on side projects, so I have to make sure I still give it time and justice.

One thing about AESIR this time that was unique, is that all of my anime is packed away right now. I literally have nothing at my fingertips. Usually prior to writing AESIR and even during it, I'll watch something Gundam related, usually Seed. I use it as a way of motivating me and inspiring me for what I'm about to write. This episode completely lived off my own Gundam energies and me playing a ton of Gundam related music, mostly Nami Tamaki, Miss Gundam SEED.

Partly because I wasn't inspired from watching Gundam, starting this episode was some trouble. I knew what had to be done, but I'm going to be jumping around a ton, like the previous episode. I had considered briefly doing what I did last time and just write what I wanted and thing edit it afterwards into the order that I wanted. Fortunately, I spared myself that this time and I figured out after a little bit of writing the order of events and when they start and end. From that I was able to work out the episode. Though the more I jump around like this, the more I want to actually have times and dates showing up at every which just to give people a sense of when things were happening in relation to each other, however I did not. The relative sense of time change and keeping things in chronological order is enough. I did not feel it was too confusing since I was keeping straight the passage of time in the prose.

Like I said though, this episode is all over the place. It immediately picks up with the effects of the cliffhanger from the last episode. So the crew of the Niph become important players again. The scenes with them were the hardest, not because of their heavy accents, but making sure I setup things right with the cops. I had to make sure everything looked good on paper. And it was not strange why the polices were calling in outside help on something they should be solving. But the introduction of the corruption element really helped to sell it. I leave things less explicitly stated with them. Part of it was a sake for space and also, I think people can figure out what's going on. Sheila didn't need a full explanation.

Like I did with the previous episode, one of the important elements here was world building. It's a new world and a lot of things that I have going on are quite important and really old. So I want to really show and contrast things. The last episode was about showing the Northern "world" and a little piece of the space "puzzle", but this episode is more of a focus on contrasts. I wanted to really show how different things were between the different worlds. The North and South parts of Earth are vastly different in ideals and atmosphere. Something I wanted to really get across in this episode, which is part of the reason for the clothing shopping and restaurant scenes. They were important for really showing what much different life was under the dome.

There is a reason people leave Antarctica City, the idea of a new land and new opportunity is only a small piece of it. The life there is a lot different. Under dome there is always the sense of danger that everyone could freeze to death. It is limited in the way it can grow, so it is very crowded, but still supports millions. Antarctica City is the most technologically advanced city in the world, but at times it doesn't always feel like it. The people are given almost everything they need. Everything is imported. Which is what the restaurant focused on. They are needing to support millions on imported food. Which means everything is heavily processed and the general quality is poor, it is still healthy, just not great tasting. Which is the point that Shizuka brings up, she's been living in the North where they have access to fresh and just in general better prepared food. The Southerns are used the bad taste that it doesn't bother them.

While writing this episode, I realized more than before that I sort of did create a dystopian society in Antarctica City and on Earth. There are the have and have nots. The North is the have nots and the South is the haves. The South has a better technological quality of life, but is it really a better life than the one the North has with more freedom and expression. It is all very classic ideas for dystopian settings. About the only thing that I think I don't do, which is usually seen in many other settings, those in the have usually have better food that the havenots never see, which is completely reversed here. The haves here have really terrible food because it is a necessity for survival on the millions. It is one interesting subverted trope I have.

And yes, the drama returns in full force with a terrorist bombing. The relationship with Ed and Shizuka continue to grow in slow and awkward ways. In the past, I've always felt I sort of rushed things or never really played things out the way I wanted. But their relationship is really moving at an even pace I feel. Each episode brings something new for them and really helps to grow them. So it doesn't feel rushed and you're always treated to some development. The continued tease I make is that Doctor Kitawara is always watching them and seems to be engineering to some degree their relationship growing for his own purposes.

Something that I feel has been lacking is the mecha. It is a mecha story, but they have been absent in any real sense of the word since the second episode. They are still pretty absent from this one as well. Partly because as the story pushes forward the mecha are going to be center stage almost the entire time for the rest of the story, it is a mecha so it only makes sense. But I wanted to feel like they were still here, even if there is not really any real action. It was still important though as I tie it back to something else later. I wanted to show that Edgar really is not trying too hard with the training, part of that does come from his rude awakening to reality. He's lost a lot of his drive watching what has happened to Shizuka. But Doctor Kitawara teased something else and the conspiracy continues to grow.

It's been a while, but yes, I did kill another named character off, including a large amount of extras. While the original cut did not have me expressly setting it, I made a little more heavily implied in the edit. I did in fact kill Karen Stein. She died in the explosion protecting Shizuka, from back trauma with the wall falling on her, internal bleeding and such. But it is going to be an increasing trend. The first episode killed an entire village, the second a named character (Rivers) and now again thousands of innocents along with Karen. So dig in for the long haul, people will be dying and especially if they have a name. Having a name will not protect them from the death that comes in war. This is going to be a very brutal and dark war. All sides will be losing people, so I'll be probably setting a new record for numbered of killed in one of my stories named or otherwise.

The last little thing I forgot to mention was the contrast with those on the Earth and in space. I'll be getting more into it in later episodes. But the technology growth and path were completely different from those in space and on Earth. It is rather ironic the way it worked. In the typical thought, those in space being limited would try to build smaller and those in Earth would not care since they have plenty of room. But the reverse happened. In space, there was nearly no limit on nature resources, so more was always available, so they never bothered about making things fit. While on Earth the nuclear winter and being confined under a dome forced them to push miniaturization to a new level to survive. The smaller the better, so their technology focused on making things smaller and doing the same thing and being highly efficient, while in space none of those things matter. Efficiency and size was not something on their mind, which will actually be a very important plot point tech wise later on.

Enjoy!